Japanese boxer wins world championship belts in four weight classes
Before the match, Fulton was a super bantamweight champion, holding the WBO belt from January 2021 and the WBC belt from November 2021. British boxer who also holds the IBO super bantamweight belt in 2019.
Fulton has won all 21 professional fights, with eight knockout wins, and is the world's number one super bantamweight fighter according to the Transnational Boxing Rankings Council, The Ring and Boxrec through December 2021. But Fulton broke the winning streak in the 22nd match, when he was unable to defend the WBO and WBC belts against Inoue.
In front of the home audience at Ariake Arena, Tokyo on July 25, Inoue completely overwhelmed. In the eighth round, the Japanese boxer struck a left blow to the stomach to let Fulton lower the defensive hand and then hit the right shot that hit the face, causing the opponent to stagger. Inoue continued to charge with a left hook, causing Fulton to fall to the floor.
After that, Inoue ran to the corner of the ring to celebrate but was called back to the middle of the ring by the referee to start counting. Fulton was able to get up and signal to continue playing after eight counts of the referee, but was unable to reverse the position.
As the fight continued, the boxer nicknamed "The Beast" cornered Fulton into the corner of the ring and unleashed a series of blows with both hands. This time, the referee was forced to intervene and give Inoue the knockout victory.
CompuBox's statistics also show the superiority of Inoue. He fired 379 hits, with 114 hits - a 30% hit rate. Fulton punched 223 punches, with 47 accurate hits, only reaching a 21% rate. The Japanese boxer had 199 jabs, hit the target 44 times, reaching a rate of 22%. Meanwhile, this figure of Fulton is only 15%, with 23 shots on target out of 152 hits. In addition, Inoue also has up to 70 accurate heavy blows, compared to 24 of the opponent.
Inoue extended his winning streak to 25, with 23 knockouts, and became the champion of four weight classes in Boxing. The victory over Fulton helped Inoue win his opponent's WBO and WBC world super bantamweight belts, thereby completing half of his journey to becoming the absolute champion in the second weight class.
Immediately after defeating Fulton, Inoue announced that he would face Filipino boxer Marlon Tapales - who holds the WBA and IBF super bantamweight titles - and open the next unification match. Tapales just won these two titles on April 8 after defeating Uzbek boxer Murodjon Akhmadaliev by referee points after 12 rounds without knockout.
Inoue has unified the bantamweight championship belts, holding the WBA (Super), IBF, Ring magazine belts from 2019 and the WBC and WBO belts from 2022, and January 2023. Prior to that, he held the WBA bantamweight (Regular) belt from 2018 to 2019, the WBO junior-bantamweight belt from 2014 to 2018 and the WBC light-flyweight belt in 2014.
Inoue went from champion of light-flyweight (48.99 kg), junior-bantamweight (52.16 kg), bantamweight (53.52 kg) and now super bantamweight (55.34 kg). ESPN believes that Japanese boxers can increase to a new weight class - Featherweight (57.15 kg), if they achieve the goal of unifying the super bantamweight belts.
"The question now is to what weight class Inoue can gain, and where is the limit?", ESPN commented on the 30-year-old boxer's latest feat.
